


End Scene.

by dreamcp



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Barricade Day, Blood, Canon Universe, Gen, background e/r if you squint, grantaire ponders mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 21:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11113260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamcp/pseuds/dreamcp
Summary: Grantaire fears his death. He fears for his friends.





	End Scene.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo it's Barricade Day. I really didn't intend on participating, but i just could not get to sleep last night, so i decided to channel some of those feelings into a fic instead. Thanks for reading!

Grantaire fears death.

He wears a brave face for his friends. He argues and he scowls and he jokes to Apollo, "You'll get us all killed, you know." He drinks himself half to death, too. Death seems to dance in the shadow of every step he takes; he does not wish to dance with her.

Grantaire is anxious. He is _terrified,_ to put it more accurately. It keeps him up at night. What will happen to his consciousness when he passes, likely sooner rather than later? What does death _feel_ like? Is there a God in Heaven and a Devil in Hell (he doubts it), or is humanity, all life, doomed to lose consciousness and float forever in the abyss? Or does the mind persist, and eternity is spent completely aware?

It keeps him up at night. He jolts awake trying to drift off to sleep, chest heaving and mind in a panic. _He cannot comprehend it._ He cannot comprehend nonexistence. He cannot comprehend death's workings; he surely does not want to.

So Grantaire drowns himself in wine instead, forcibly forgets. He forgets the preparations around him, too. Young recruits and munitions alike pile up as months pass. Apollo preaches to the masses, his words a golden beacon of sparkling hope and shining pride.

Lamarque dies. The barricades go up. Before he knows it he is surrounded by Death. She takes his friends, one by one, and as the rush of fury amongst his friends settles into somber fear, Grantaire reaches again for the bottle and drinks himself into a deep stupor.

Death continues to swirl between Les Amis regardless. 

He knows not when he awakens, but it is raised voices that finally stir him. The stench of blood floods his nose from all around, and bodies litter the ground inside and outside the café. Grantaire panics. _They're gone, they're all gone. He's alone._

Grantaire follows the voices, and rushes upstairs as best as he can. Guards surround the open window, and lo and behold, Apollo stands silhouetted against the rising sun behind him. Hunched over and disheveled, but alive. Relief floods through Grantaire. He yells out a drunken plea to stop, to wait. He stumbles to Apollo's side, searching his face.

Enjolras is tired. Angry. Grieving. It pains Grantaire to see him this way, to see him so... defeated.

Grantaire suddenly feels more sober than he has in months, possibly years.

The guards, recovering from the surprise of seeing Grantaire walk willingly towards his sure demise, aim their rifles once more.

Ah yes. Death. Neither Grantaire nor Enjolras can escape her, in the end. The last thing Grantaire wishes is to go to her alone. He worries Enjolras feels the same.

Out of fear, or camaraderie, or some mixture of both, he extends his hand to Enjolras. 

"Do you permit it?" he murmurs. He knows not whether he refers to the act of dying or the events that follow. Either way, they will go together.

Enjolras smiles, and presses his hand in Grantaire's.

Grantaire wonders if Enjolras ever thought about death. If he truly believed it noble, if he feared it also. He wonders if Enjolras ever considered the "after" or if he, too, found it unbearable. 

He wonders if dying together will allow them to somehow remain together in that "after." For his short remaining sanity, he desperately wishes so.

Enjolras squeezes his hand as the rifles fire. The last thing Grantaire remembers is their hands shaking in each other’s grips before Death receives them both.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I'm trying to work through some stuff. Not sure that writing it out helped, but it was productive at least.


End file.
